Say ‘Hi’ to Karis Grace

This week Kirsten & I went to have our 18 week sonogram. The doctor wanted the sonogram to make sure the baby is growing properly. I wanted the sonogram to find out the baby’s gender. Some people don’t want to know and they want to be surprised at birth. I don’t have the patience for that. Seriously, I gave Kirsten her birthday present a month early because I don’t like to wait. During the sonogram we found out that, God willing, we will have a baby girl!

When most people learn that we know the baby’s gender they generally follow up with “so do you have any names picked out?” And the answer to that question is: ‘yes, we do.’ Our baby girl’s name will be Karis Grace. I would like to let you know why we chose that name.

When Kirsten & I were dating we got talking one night about baby names and I mentioned that if I ever have a baby girl I would want to name her ‘Grace.’ That night Kirsten said that she had wanted to name a baby girl ‘Karis’, which comes from the greek word “Charis” (pronounced Care-iss; We changed the spelling so people wouldn’t think her name was pronounced sha-reese). Charis means “grace.” So why would we essentially name our baby girl “Grace Grace?” Because in the Bible, in John 1:14-16 says: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.”) And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”

It was important to me that our child’s name would proclaim the great graces that we have received from God. This is how I define grace: “unmerited favor.” In other words grace is getting something that you don’t deserve. The greatest grace the world has ever known is in the love God showed to mankind by sending Jesus, his Son, to pay the price of sin. And through turning from our sinful lives against God and turning to faith in Jesus perfect life, death, and resurrection of Jesus we can experience the great saving grace of God: An eternity with him in his kingdom.

Apart from the saving grace of God extended to those who have faith in Jesus there are also the common graces of God, which we would define as anything good. James 1:17 says “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” The common graces of God are all the good things in this life we get to enjoy. Coffee, football games, music, good food, good books, marital intimacy, sunsets, health, and children are all examples of the many common graces God has given to mankind to reveal his goodness to us.

So our desire is that our child by her name and by her life would proclaim the ‘grace upon grace’ that God has given us. And we pray that she would grow up to love Jesus, to know Jesus, and to make him known.